hairstreak

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. Any of numerous butterflies of the subfamily Theclinae, having transverse streaks on the undersurface of the wings and fine, hairlike projections on the hind wings.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. Any of many butterflies, of the subfamily Theclinae, that have hairlike projections on the back wings.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. A butterfly of the genus Thecla

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. One of the small dark butterflies of the genus Thecla; a theclan: so called from the minute hair-like appendages of the hind wings. The green hairstreak is T. rubi; the black, T. pruni; there are many others.

Two green hairstreak butterflies, gracefully viridescent, dance past on a soft wind that sifts through reeds, sets waving the tall golden flower stems of bog asphodel, and silky white plumes of cottongrass that has colonised the old peat-diggings.

When Matthew Oates, the National Trust's roving butterfly expert, first described this affliction, it sounded quite pleasant: by August, butterfly lovers are so knackered, all they can do is sit in an armchair and wait for the last butterfly of summer, the brown hairstreak, to descend from an ash tree.